Chapter One
Loretta
‘Ouch!’ Loretta gasped.
Daisy snatched a tissue from the box on the counter in the Butterbury Sewing Box, the sewing shop that had been in the family for over seventy years. ‘You’d think in all the decades you’ve been sewing you could manage to hem some curtains without causing an injury.’ She covered her mother’s finger, soaking up the blood. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m the parent. Shouldn’t it be me asking you those sorts of questions?’ Loretta at least had an excuse to frown now she’d hurt herself. With everything she had on her mind it was difficult to keep up the pretence, keep smiling and act nonchalant.
Daisy rolled her eyes, something the youngest daughter of the Chamberlain family had well and truly perfected. ‘I’m thirty-one, Mum. It’s time to letme be a grown up.’
‘Mothers never stop worrying.’
Daisy shook her head and got on with opening the cardboard box that had come in this morning’s delivery. The shop had had a happy life here in the village of Butterbury, so had Loretta, but with what she’d discovered a couple of months ago the fabric of their very existence might well be about to fall apart, and she wasn’t sure that even withthe strongest of thread and the best skill in the world she’d be able to stitch it back together this time.
Loretta got a plaster from the first-aid kit they kept out the back of the shop and wrapped it around her finger. She caught sight of herself in the oval mirror against one wall and hoped that by looking into it she’d get herself together enough to convince Daisy or anyone who came intothe shop that she had nothing to worry about, her life was easy, an absolute dream. Isn’t that what everyone was trying to do these days? Sharing only the nice parts on social media, the parts that made it look as though life was a breeze.
Loretta scrutinised her appearance. Her hair had gone grey but it had held onto its volume and enough bounce that she could get away with wearing it just belowher collarbones. Cut in choppy long layers and parted to one side, it hid some of the lines that had begun to appear, and a pair of thick-rimmed dark glasses hid the frown that seemed to have deepened between her eyebrows. But if it got much deeper she might need some of those clever filters Daisy talked about – the ones you could use in photographs to make a person look as though they had flawlessskin, brighter eyes. Loretta’s mum, Rebecca, had always been about growing old gracefully, told Loretta that any lines and wrinkles that appeared on the face and body were signs of a life well lived and they should be grateful and proud of every single one. Loretta knew where she was coming from but, at sixty-five, she wasn’t quite ready to let age and gravity get the upper hand.
She went backto the front of the shop and, with her guard up and hopefully the worry erased from her expression, finished hemming the curtains and did her best to drag her mind from fretting about Daisy or either of her other two daughters. She knew that what she had to share with Fern, Ginny and Daisy was going to come as a shock, but she also knew she wouldn’t be sharing the news quite yet. She wasn’t readyand wasn’t sure she ever would be. This was one Christmas revelation that wrapping paper and bows couldn’t make any better.
Curtains finished, Daisy managed the inside of the shop while Loretta took a stepladder out to the front and got on with the task of cleaning the mullioned windows. In the summer months they barely needed much attention, come autumn it would be a weekly job at least, butnow, in the winter, it seemed the wind and the rain had it in for them and every morning she liked to give the frontage a once over to keep it looking as inviting as always. A family business was different to working for someone else, it instilled an extra sense of pride.
She felt the bite of cold and worked quickly using the hot water from a bucket and the sponge to do the glass and the woodenframes before climbing up the steps to wipe the iron-bracketed oval sign depicting the name of the shop with ‘Est. 1948’ written in italic beneath, which was a regular bird perch and thus saw the birds leaving behind the odd treat. The moment she was finished, she hurried back inside with the bucket of water and the cloth and then the stepladder. ‘It’s freezing out there. Arctic!’ It didn’t helpthat she’d nipped outside without buttoning up her coat or putting on a scarf. She’d thought she’d be fine in a chunky woollen sweater and a pair of fingerless gloves.
‘Why do you think I didn’t volunteer?’ Daisy grinned as Loretta pushed the door with glass panels that matched the windows closed. Daisy slotted the last few reels of cotton onto the plastic display to refill what they’d sold andhung up a couple of packets of needles, filling the row on a hook on the far wall alongside other haberdashery accessories.
‘Don’t forget the front step still needs sweeping.’ Loretta took the notepad her daughter had used to jot down what else needed replenishing and disappeared past the tea and coffee area out at the back and went upstairs to find more supplies. It was best to make a few tripsrather than try to carry everything back down at once.
The space above the shop had originally been a flat and it was where Loretta and her late husband, Harry, had lived when they first married, before they started a family. But now the upstairs to the Butterbury Sewing Box was a series of storerooms as well as a dedicated venue to host sewing groups, knitting lessons and quilting workshops.The old bedroom and dining room had walled shelving units, the kitchen was used for catering for the groups and for Daisy and Loretta’s lunches. It had evolved exactly as they’d needed.
Back in the shop Loretta found Daisy peering at something on her phone. Daisy was a good worker most of the time but that was another thing about a family business, working with parents, siblings, children, itwasn’t always easy to ensure employees were doing exactly what they should be. Loretta knew that in any job your mind might wander – in an office there’d be conversations by the water cooler, perhaps a conversation about something non work-related at a desk – people rarely spent the entire day focused solely on work. Personal life crept in, she knew that, but lately Daisy’s focus had drifted. Shedealt with practicalities well – stocking shelves, sorting through invoices – and was always polite to customers, but there was something bothering her and Loretta couldn’t get any information out of her youngest daughter. Loretta had a horrible feeling that whatever was troubling Daisy was deep-rooted and something Loretta has missed along the way – and as a mother that was the worst feeling ofall.
‘Did you sweep the front step for me?’ Loretta asked Daisy when her daughter finally put her phone back into the rear pocket of her jeans.
‘I’ll do it now.’
On the one hand, maybe she shouldn’t assume that because she was hiding something, everyone else was too. But on the other, she wished Daisy would tell her what was on her mind.
Daisy reiterated the ‘Arctic!’ comment the minute shecame back inside. ‘It’s a thankless task, you know.’ She put the dustpan and brush away beneath the counter. ‘The step will be covered in leaves and debris before lunchtime, I bet you. You’re making more work for us. I say leave it until the spring.’
Loretta laughed. ‘The village will have to burrow their way in to the shop if we do that. And remember, your grandad is stopping by today – youknow I like him to see the shop at its best.’
Ivor, Loretta’s eighty-eight-year-old father, had once worked in this shop with Loretta’s mother, Rebecca, after they took on the family business from his mother, Eve, when the time was right. It had been their pride and joy and now it was still something that made Ivor happy whenever he was here. Ivor had, however, refused to come and live with Lorettain her house or contemplate having the flat at the shop converted back to accommodation especially for him. Instead he’d taken one look around Butterbury Lodge – the care home at the top of the hill the other side of Lantern Square, which sat in the heart of Butterbury, in the dip between the road that led in the direction of the lodge and the road that stretched out of the village and ledon up to the local farms – and opted to grab a highly coveted place there. The lodge was, in his words, ‘Close but not too close.’
‘He does love the shop,’ smiled Daisy. ‘What time will he be here?’ She’d softened and picked up a feather duster to tackle the uppermost shelves, not something she usually did unless it was requested. It was testament to how much she and her sisters adored theirgrandad – he was the way to their hearts when all else failed.
‘Soon,’ was all Loretta said before she grabbed the broom to sweep the internal floors that needed doing a few times a day. ‘Do you need to rush out?’ Loretta always liked to remain flexible, let Daisy have her life, and it worked both ways. Between them they managed the workload and customers but allowed for errands and each of themto do their own thing when they needed to. And given Daisy was thirty-one, Loretta didn’t always ask too many details about what her daughter was up to.
‘Not until later so I’ll get to see Grandad.’ She dusted the lower shelves near the counter and held the door open for a group of women chattering as they bustled inside.
The trouble with a shop that had stood the test of time was that the windows,the floors and the structure were all a part of the history and not always geared up for a December day that made them feel as though they were into February and not still the better side of Christmas. And so Loretta turned the heating up in the shop. But the drafts and everything else inside the Butterbury Sewing Box were all a part of the memories, and besides, when it was cold, it gaveLoretta and Daisy a chance to show off their knitted garments by wearing jumpers with big roll necks as they worked. Today Loretta wore a camel-coloured jumper in cable knit and Daisy had gone for a wine-coloured jumper that suited her rich chestnut hair, the same shade Harry’s had been when he and Loretta first met.
The women had gone slowly up and down each of the three small aisles in theshop, picking up items and discussing their needs, and after Loretta rang up the orders for the customers who were visitors to Butterbury – a pack of assorted needles for a sewing machine, a packet of premium quilt batting, and a dozen balls of mulberry wool – she wished them a merry Christmas and turned to find Daisy had made her a cup of tea.
‘I picked up some cookies from the Lantern Bakerytoo.’ Daisy indicated the space beneath the counter where she’d left the paper bag.
‘Now we’re talking.’ Loretta took out a cookie and bit into the soft, gooey centre. Daisy did the same and for a moment, silence descended now that the customers had left.
